Saturday, November 22

Australia should be exporting clean tech

My letter as per below was published to day in the AFR: In
“We are ill-prepared for China’s great energy shift” (AFR 20thNovember
2014) Peter Sheehan and Jiang Kejun contend China is setting a new course on
energy policy with profound consequences for the Australian economy.

What is becoming increasingly obvious is China
is gaining in momentum in reducing its dependency on fossil fuels, and is
transitioning rapidly to a low-carbon sources of energy by investing heavily in
cleaner technologies ,from everything to large scale infrastructure and
buildings to electric cars and consumer goods.

The move to a lower emissions
economy is prompting some officials to suggest the coal
share of energy usage might fall to 60 % by 2022 and 50% or less by 2030. According to Paul Joffe, who is Senior Foreign Policy Counsel of the World Resources Institute , China is already taking action to address the climate problem as its seeks to “rebalance” its economy into less energy-intensive service type industries.

China is already a global leader in
cleaner technologies and Australia should follow other countries including the
US into China in seeking to partner joint ventures in clean energy and
technology solutions. This will require Australia to accelerate research and development into cleaner energy technologies and promote its services areas of the economy to take advantage of these crucial expanding opportunities in the decades ahead and not to rely on its traditional materials exports.

2 comments:

While it's still true that China is the number 1 polluter in the world (far outdistancing even the US), its gratifying to see they're making efforts to discontinue the use of non-renewable fossil fuels. I just wish every industrialized country would join in sooner rather than later. Australia has coal and Canada has the oil tar sands - both being exploited to a dangerous degree. I hope your country responds to the sense you and other concerned citizens espouse.

Thanks Susannot much we can do , but add our small contribution to the debate. I had my published letter firstly as a headline - re published again to day under a different heading so the editor is trying to give it plenty of audience reach if nothing else. Best wishes

About Me

I have worked in the roles as Company Secretary or Divisional financial executive with larger Australian based multinational companies before changing careers in favour of sales and marketing for the latter 12 years of business life.
My particular interests include corporate social responsibility, ethics and research into more sustainable business practices.
I am a fellow of CPA Australia and an Associate member of the Governance Institute of Australia which was previously called the Chartered Secretaries Australia. I am chairman of the Malawi Support group who are a small group of catholic parishioners who raise funds to support a sister parish in Malawi.